Street Food - Cultural and Economic Aspects

Cultural and Economic Aspects

Differences in culture, social stratification and history have resulted in different patterns how family street vendor enterprises are traditionally created and run in different areas of the world. For example, few women are street vendors in Bangladesh, but women predominate in the trade in Nigeria and Thailand. Doreen Fernandez says that Filipino cultural attitudes towards meals is one "cultural factor operating in the street food phenomenon" in the Philippines because eating "food out in the open, in the market or street or field" is "not at odds with the meal indoors or at home" where "there is no special room for dining".

Walking on the street while eating is considered rude in some cultures, such as Japan. In India, Henrike Donner wrote about a "marked distinction between food that could be eaten outside, especially by women," and the food prepared and eaten at home; with some non-Indian food being too "strange" or tied too closely to non-vegetarian preparation methods to be made at home.

In Tanzania's Dar es Salaam region, street food vendors produce economic benefits beyond their families by purchasing local fresh foods which has led to a proliferation of urban gardens and small scale farms. In the United States, street food vendors are credited with supporting New York City's rapid growth by supplying meals for the city's merchants and workers. Proprietors of street food in the United States have had a goal of upward mobility, moving from selling on the street to their own shops. However, in Mexico, an increase in street vendors has been seen as a sign of deteriorating economic conditions in which food vending is the only employment opportunity that unskilled labor who have migrated from rural areas to urban areas are able to find.

In 2002, Coca Cola reported that China, India and Nigeria were some of its fastest growing markets; markets where the company's expansion efforts included training and equipping mobile street vendors to sell its products.